The Sweetest Dream. Doris Lessing

that, saying this, she was agreeing.

      At this Johnny glanced around the young faces, judging if they were as shocked by her pettiness as he was. ‘Money,’ he said loftily, ‘is really not the point here.’

      Frances was again silenced. She got up, went to the working surface near the stove, stood with her back to the room.

      ‘I want to bring Tilly here,’ said Johnny. ‘And in fact she’s here. She’s in the car.’

      Colin and Andrew both got up and went to their mother, standing on either side of her. This enabled her to turn around and face Johnny across the room. She could not speak. And Johnny, seeing his former wife flanked by their sons, three angry people with white accusing faces, was also, but just for the moment, silenced.

      Then he rallied, stretched out his arms, palms towards them, and said, ‘From each according to their capacity, to each according to their need.’ And let his arms drop.

      ‘Oh, that is so beautiful,’ said Rose.

      ‘Groovy,’ said Geoffrey.

      The newcomer, Jill, breathed, ‘Oh, it’s lovely.’

      All eyes were now on Johnny, a situation he was well used to. He stood, receiving rays of criticism, beams of love, and smiled at them. He was a tall man, Comrade Johnny, with already greying hair cut like a Roman’s, at your service always, and he wore tight black jeans, a black leather Mao jacket especially made for him by an admiring comrade in the rag trade. Severity was his preferred style, smiling or not, for a smile could never be more than a temporary concession, but he was smiling boldly now.

      ‘Do you mean to say,’ said Andrew, ‘that Tilly’s been out there in the car waiting, all this time?’

      ‘Good God,’ said Colin. ‘Typical.’

      ‘I’ll go and bring her in,’ said Johnny, and marched out, brushing past his ex-wife and Colin and Andrew, not looking at them.

      No one moved. Frances thought if her sons had not been so close, enveloping her with their support, she would have fallen. All the faces around the table were turned towards them: that this was a very bad moment, they had at last understood.

      They heard the front door open – Johnny of course had a key to his mother’s house – and then in the doorway to this room, the kitchen, stood a little frightened figure, in a big duffel-coat, trembling with cold, trying to smile, but instead out of her burst a great wail, as she looked at Frances, who she had been told was kind and would look after her, ‘until we get things straightened out’. She was a little bird blown by a storm, and Frances was across the room to her, and had her arms round her, saying, ‘It’s all right, shhh, it’s all right.’ Then she remembered this was not a child, but a girl of fourteen or so, and her impulse, to sit down and hold this waif on her lap was out of order. Meanwhile Johnny, just behind the girl, was saying, ‘I think bed is indicated,’ and then, generally around the room, ‘I’ll be off’ But did not go.

      The girl was looking in appeal at Andrew, whom after all she did know, among all these strangers.

      ‘Don’t worry, I’ll deal with it.’ He put his arm round Tilly, and turned to go out of the room.

      ‘I’ll put her down in the basement,’ he said. ‘It’s nice and warm down there.’

      ‘Oh, no, no, no, please,’ cried the girl. ‘Don’t, I cannot be alone, I can’t, don’t make me.’

      ‘Of course not, if you don’t want to,’ said Andrew. Then, to his mother, ‘I’ll put a bed in with me for tonight.’ And he led her out. They all sat quiet, listening to how he coaxed her up the stairs.

      Johnny was face to face with Frances, who said to him, low, hoping it would not be heard by the others, ‘Go away, Johnny. Just get out.’

      He tried an appealing smile around, caught Rose’s eyes, who did smile back, but she was doubtful, withstood passionate reproach from Sophie, nodded sternly at Geoffrey, whom he had known for years. And left. The front door shut. The car door slammed.

      Now Colin was hovering behind Frances, touching her arm, her shoulder, not knowing what to do.

      ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘come on upstairs.’ They went out together. Frances began swearing as she climbed the stairs, first softly, so as not to be heard by the young, then loudly, ‘Fuck him, fuck him, fuck, the shit, the absolute shit.’ In her sitting-room she sat crying, while Colin, at a loss, at last thought of getting her tissues and then a glass of water.

      Meanwhile Julia had been told by Andrew what was going on. She came down, opened Frances’s door without knocking, and marched in. ‘Please explain it to me,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand. Why do you let him behave like this?’

      Julia von Arne was born in a particularly charming part of Germany, near Stuttgart, a region of hills, streams and vineyards. She was the only girl, the third child in a genial gentle family. Her father was a diplomat, her mother a musician. In July 1914 came visiting Philip Lennox, a promising Third Secretary from the embassy in Berlin. That fourteen-year-old Julia should fall in love with handsome Philip – he was twenty-five – was not surprising, but he fell in love with her. She was pretty, tiny, with golden ringlets, and wore frocks the romantic man told her were like flowers. She had been brought up strictly, by governesses, English and French, and to him it seemed that every gesture she made, every smile, every turn of her head, was formal, prescribed, as if she moved in a dance. Like all girls taught to be conscious of their bodies, because of the frightful dangers of immodesty, her eyes spoke for her, could strike to the heart with a glance, and when she lowered delicate eyelids over blue invitations to love he felt he was being rejected. He had sisters, whom he had seen a few days ago in Sussex, jolly tomboys enjoying the exemplary summer that has been celebrated in so many memoirs and novels. A sister’s friend, Betty, had been teased because she came to supper with solid brown arms where white scratches showed how she had been playing in the hay with the dogs. His family had watched him to see if he fancied this girl, who would make a suitable wife, and he had been prepared to consider her. This little German miss seemed to him as glamorous as a beauty glimpsed in a harem, all promise and hidden bliss, and he fancied that if a sunbeam did strike her she would melt like a snowflake. She gave him a red rose from the garden, and he knew she was offering him her heart. He declared his love in the moonlight, and next day spoke to her father. Yes, he knew that fourteen was too young, but he was asking for formal permission to propose when she was sixteen. And so they parted, in 1914, while war was coming to a boil, but like many liberal well-adjusted people it seemed to both the von Arnes and the Lennoxes that it was ridiculous Germany and England could go to war. When war was declared, Philip had left his love in tears just two weeks before. In those days governments seemed compelled to announce that wars must be over by Christmas, and the lovers were sure they would see each other soon.

      Almost at once xenophobia was poisoning Julia’s love. Her family did not mind her loving her Englishman – did not their respective Emperors call themselves cousins? – but the neighbours commented, and servants whispered and gossiped. During the years of the war rumours followed Julia and her family too. Her three brothers were fighting in the Trenches, her father was in the War Office, and her mother did war work, but those few days of fever in July 1914 marked them all for comment and suspicion. Julia never lost her faith in her love and in Philip. He was wounded, twice, and in devious ways she heard about it and wept for him. It did not matter, cried Julia’s heart, how badly he was wounded, she would love him for ever. He was demobbed in 1919. She was waiting for him, knowing he was coming to claim her, when into the room where five years before they had flirted came a man she felt she ought to know. An empty sleeve was pinned up on his chest, and his face was taut and lined. She was now nearly twenty. He saw a tall young woman – she had grown some inches – with fair hair piled on top of her head, held with a big jet arrow, and wearing heavy black for two dead brothers. A third brother, a boy – he was not yet twenty – had been wounded and sat, still in his uniform, a stiff leg propped before him on a stool. The two so recent enemies, stared at each other. Then Philip, not smiling, went forward with an outstretched